


Blood in the Light of Dawn

by stele3



Series: The Tether Series [4]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/F, Gen, M/M, Multi, OMC - Freeform, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 23:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16207802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stele3/pseuds/stele3
Summary: James has done too many things for such happiness to last. He knows this but by God he will fight for every minute, even as the proverbial sword of Damocles swings above his head like a pendulum.So preoccupied is he by these thoughts that he does not even notice the hovering of another, more potent blade until it has already fallen, until there is a little slave girl at the front door of his shop with wide eyes and a message that freezes his blood.





	Blood in the Light of Dawn

_~Philadelphia, April 1723_

 

Making love to Silver requires careful adherence to a treaty whose terms accumulate gradually over time, the negotiations of which remain entirely unspoken.

It does not help that Silver himself—for James cannot bring himself to think of John Silver by any name other than _that_ one: quicksilver, darting into and out of his life too fast to hold—at first appears utterly oblivious to either the treaty’s existence or its necessity.

When Thomas asked, shortly after their first tryst, what Silver prefers in bed, he was answered by a blank stare that smoothed into a smirk and the wry comment, “What’s not to like?”

In Silver’s case the answer is: a great deal, all of which must be inferred from the sudden vacancy of attention that indicates some part of him has retreated from their bedroom. Sometimes these moments seem random. More often, however, they fit into discernible patterns. He cannot be flat on his back underneath one of them; he cannot be the sole focus of their mutual attention; he needs to move freely and without restraint.

Obviously, the leg creates some difficulties in that last regard. Silver lacks neither physical strength nor mental resourcefulness; nevertheless, certain positions are unavailable to him or require assistance, which frequently triggers the aforementioned retreat.

More than once James finds himself desperately wishing that he knew how to get a letter to Madi—but what the devil would he say? One simply cannot ask a woman, especially one he respects so deeply, how best to bed her estranged husband.

Fortunately, Thomas and James have extensive experience in joint problem-solving. Thomas seems especially excited to address the challenge: he has always needed a project, and while for years Rebekah has served that purpose to their mutual benefit, he now seems utterly taken with the maze of Silver’s nature.

James knows the feeling all too well.

Some things, they discuss in private moments. Others, they fall into automatically. One of them always keeps their eyes on Silver’s face and a quick glance between them is enough to alert the other to a breach of the treaty. Usually James is the watcher, having more experience with Silver and his tells. That leaves Thomas with the task of swiftly yet subtly moving them all away from whatever has upset the balance between Silver’s desire for them and Silver’s desire to pleasure them at some hidden cost to himself.

They do not, ever, at any point, discuss what in Silver’s past might have necessitated the treaty’s existence. Thomas tries only once, and James leaves the house for the rest of the day. It isn’t that he has lost his curiosity; it’s that he fears his own greed.

Already he has so much more than he deserves, he fears asking for more from Silver, or Thomas, or God Himself.

Naturally it is not long before Silver discerns what they’re about. Perceptiveness about the hidden motives of those around him has kept him alive this long, of course he does not fail to apply the same rigor to their small bandbox, even with the assurance of James’ love and Thomas’…well, James doesn’t quite know how Thomas feels about Silver. Attraction is a given; fascination, thereafter certain to follow. He is a puzzle, and James has to squelch a surge of protectiveness towards Silver. He, too, has passed through that fascination, and cannot fault Thomas for feeling the same.

Of course, Silver notes the interest and its source, and reacts as poorly as James feared. Shouting and violence would have been preferable to his sudden absence, especially terrible after a week of his body in their bed and his skin under their hands. Thomas, James can tell, is indignant on James’ behalf but even more frustrated to be thwarted in his own careful designs.

It’s James who stumbles on the solution, though he had not sought it out. He’d only feared the end to their interlude and the loss of certain opportunities which, having hibernated for years beneath the detritus of his mind, break ground on the strength of desperation. Weeds that he had never managed to uproot even when he lay in the dark of a plantation cot, with Thomas curled against his chest, and gave himself over to hatred of Silver, hoping to drown even the most stubborn roots that had grown between them.

It’d been impossible, even with Thomas in his arms. _Especially_ with Thomas in his arms, delivered back to him as if Silver himself had reached across the river Styx and plucked him from the land of death.

And so he quietly asks Silver one morning. They are both standing at the basin washing their faces for the day while Thomas putters about in the front room, signing with Rebekah and teaching Marielena her letters. James asks as directly as he can, which means he keeps his eyes on the comb in his hands and stammers out something about a previous night, now one week removed, and variations thereof.

Silver blinks at him several times then says slowly, as if feeling his way through a darkened room which he knows to contain a bear trap, “All right, if you want.”

His diffidence very nearly strikes any desire from James’ breast and James spends the rest of the day furiously pounding nails into anything that he can while Erik, bless the poor boy, handles every customer who dares to show their face. In moments like these, James wants nothing better than to find a man and beat him soundly or be beaten in turn. It’s the same darkness, responding to every hurt with a howl of rage.

The howl lasts until that night and then is promptly stifled, for what James thought aversion turns out to be inexperience, and—having enlisted the aid of a thoroughly delighted Thomas—Silver quickly gets James on his back and buggers him within an inch of his life. James has always had a special fondness for buggery, both giving and receiving, but he thinks he may very well become devoted to the latter. Hell, he’ll spread his legs every night if he gets to keep this.

Silver looks so _shocked_ , by his own pleasure, but far more by that of James. He keeps asking, “Is this good? Does this feel good?” no matter how many times James mumbles _yes yes yes_ , until Thomas finally sits up to kiss Silver quiet.

James is a greedy, grasping man, but even he feels very nearly sated in this moment, with Silver’s thick cock moving in him and Thomas’ hand jerking him off, and the two of them kissing fast and filthy above him.

Afterwards, Silver spends two days either hovering near James’ elbow or _looking_ at him. Not in a particularly seductive way, either—his gaze is more akin to an expression he once directed at the crew, as if Silver is mentally turning him over to examine his every scuff and freckle.

James bears up under both the scrutiny and Thomas’ smug twinkle as well as he can, still braced against the possibility that he will lose both of those things. He cannot shake the belief that all of this is terribly impermanent, a condition that has plagued him since the first moment that Thomas first stepped back into his embrace.

In that initial reunion—once he’d gotten past the shock—he’d thought, _The men behind me are going to open fire_.

Then, later, when Thomas had led him back to the thatched hovel in which he lived, _Someone will come in the night to cut our throats._

After they’d fled the plantation, Thomas coughed for six days straight, likely from smoke inhalation. That hadn’t stopped the beat of, _He will sicken and die_.

James has done too many things for such happiness to last. He knows this but by _God_ he will fight for every minute, even as the proverbial sword of Damocles swings above his head like a pendulum.

So preoccupied is he by these thoughts that he does not even notice the hovering of another, more potent blade until it has already fallen, until there is a little slave girl at the front door of his shop with wide eyes and a message that freezes his blood.

He runs home, heedless to the stares of passersby. _Stupid, foolish, unforgiveable to not have anticipated—_

When he bursts through the front door, it’s Rebekah, Thomas, and Silver at the kitchen table. Ignoring the knives that both Rebekah and Silver have drawn, James shoves the door shut behind him and advances on Silver. “How much money do you have, right now?”

“What the _fuck_?” Silver demands, heaving upright on his crutch. He does tuck the knife away, though, and says, “One gold doubloon. Nothing more that I can get from the smithy before Thursday. What the fuck is this?”

James rounds on Thomas. “You? How much money, now, _right now_?”

“A pound and seven shillings. James, what is wrong?”

“Erik. He’s being _sold_. His father struck his mother and Erik got in the way, and now his _fuck of a father_ is fucking _selling him_ at the stocks!”

“ _Shit_ ,” Thomas says, and scrambles to his feet. Rebekah is already at the door, heading upstairs. Thomas hurries into their downstairs room and there’s the sound of multiple drawers opening.

“When?” Silver asks, low and steady, and thank God. James looks at him and sees a dark glint in Silver’s eye, one that he knows.

It breaks through the panic and sets James aright on his feet. “Tomorrow. The auction is always on a Wednesday, outside the London Coffee House on Front and High Street.”

“A boy, thirteen years of age, with a club foot,” Silver muses aloud. His voice takes on the familiar cadence that sets James’s mind to narrow quarters and sea spray, the shush of sails above and the creak of wood below, and between these: a voice like smoke, weaving into ears and between lips. “He’ll be almost useless as a laborer and less than useless in the fields. If he’s clever enough—which cannot be in doubt—he will pretend to read and speak only Dutch, thus extinguishing his appeal to any English-speaking household.”

“Surely he would _want_ to appeal to them?” asks Thomas, who has returned with a handful of coins.

“Only if he were not hoping for rescue,” Silver counters. “Every sign of intelligence, every hint of skill, adds to the price of his sale, which is fit to be meager, especially if he plays up his incapacitation. His mother knew to send word to us, Erik will know to expect a response. He will do what he can to keep the price low enough for us to—”

He cuts off, because Rebekah has come back in the room. She’s carrying her menorah, which she sets down on the table with a decisive thump then backs away. “It’s solid silver.”

Thomas says, “Rebekah, you needn’t—”

“Shut up.” Rebekah’s eyes haven’t left Silver. “Will it be enough?”

Slowly and with reverent hands, Silver lifts the menorah. After a moment he visibly weighs it. “Yes,” he says, and James can breathe again.

Of course, then Silver tells him, “You cannot be there. No. Listen to me. You have gone and made yourself _known_ as a respectable shopkeeper, and by proxy, they know he works in your employee. If the auctioneers see you in the crowd, they will drive up the price. You will go,” he nods to Thomas, “along with Marielena. I will be in the crowd to make disparaging comments on his form and dissuade other bidders.”

A bit of the knot in James’s belly loosens. In this, at least, there is no one he trusts more than Silver.

-o-

The night passes in sleepless agony. After supper, James paces the floor. Silver hadn’t returned until well after the evening meal, but he’d had seven pounds in hand—more than enough to buy a small boy with a limp, no matter how bright.

Marielena is the only one among them who takes to bed, on the opinion that someone must sleep enough to have their wits tomorrow. Upstairs the squeak of floorboards mirror James’s steps, as Rebekah is likely too agitated to sleep. Thomas and Silver sit at the table and refuse to turn in while James himself cannot bring himself to so much as take a seat. Whenever he does, dark imaginings creep up his ankles and poison his blood. All he can think about is Erik’s eyes gone blank and dim, his clever hands smashed and blistered by labor, his back flayed under the whip.

It’s Silver who breaks the lengthy silence. “I confess that, in the many times I speculated about what shape the afterlife I had forced on you might take, I never imagined you as a father figure, much less twice over.”

James falters in midstep and casts him a savage look that utterly fails to quail Silver’s gaze. Thomas, the traitor, makes a sound approaching amusement and rubs a hand across his face. “I must confess some similar astonishment. Don’t look at us like that, James, you barely knew the poor boy ten minutes before you were offering him boarding and employment.”

Part of James still wants to snarl at them for speaking so lightly at this moment; but they are awake with him, waiting for the break of day.

Heaving a sigh, he strides over and takes a seat. “You both think you’re very clever, but neither of you have one-tenth the skill of Miranda. She could take my legs out from under me in a mere sentence.”

“Well, then, give your hands here,” Silver says, reaching out to them both, “and we’ll have a fucking séance.”

James scowls and makes as if to bat his fingers away, but then catches them instead. “I did not seek out a paternal role and if I’d been given a choice in the matter I would have deferred to someone, anyone better equipped. Marielena was just…so young, when we met her. And Erik, even younger. They wanted for practical skills—not that either of them were helpless, but their means of survival had been fashioned to please those members of society who meant to keep them on its edges. The role of teacher is not so far removed from the echo of parentage—for what are parents except our first teachers? In taking on the role of one, I inadvertently adopted the other.”

“Darling,” Thomas says, “I think you’ll recall the three months I spent teaching French in Boston. At no point did any of the wretches in my care look to me as a father, nor did I hold them in any higher regard than that which they deserved.”

“But they were wretches,” James counters. “A condition that you were forced to discover to your dismay, when first you had hoped for bright pupils. I have known many a wretch in my day and have fashioned the countenance to frighten them away, and so it is only the worthy who pass inspection.”

“Or those of us wretches who are clever enough to deceive,” Silver adds lightly.

“Or that,” James agrees, though he squeezes Silver’s fingers to be sure that he hears the jest behind the words.

“Did you form any such attachments in your time as a pirate?” Thomas asks.

“Christ, no,” James answers, but then he thinks of Eleanor Guthrie. She’d been younger than Marielena when he met her, filled with the kind of feral pride that a teenaged girl would need to hold sway over an island of pirates. And yet…yet there had been a few moments. When he’d first become her favorite: he’d brought in the _Santa Dominga_ , for which she’d graced him with the same cloying charm she granted other big earners; he’d spoken to her directly, with neither deference nor scorn, and something in her expression had flickered to life like a hidden candle of tenderness. The night before he’d left to hunt the _Urca De Lima_ , and he’d kissed her forehead; when he’d returned, and she’d embraced him in front of her entire tavern.

When he’d held her in his arms as she died, the hidden candle fluttering out.

A hand touches his. “Come back, my dear,” Thomas murmurs. “Come back.”

James blinks, his fingers curling around Thomas’. He clears his throat twice. Silver says nothing, but his gaze is a balm by itself. Thomas can bring him back from the darkness, but Silver knows where he goes and what things await him there.

“None who survived that life,” he answers, finally.

At some point he falls asleep in the chair between them. His dreams are dark and jumbled, and he jolts awake with horror clawing at his insides only to be greeted back to the land of the waking by the sight of Marielena descending the stairs. She’s wearing one of her nicer dresses: not the one she wears to church, but light blue in color with a new shawl wrapped around her shoulders and pinned to the bodice. With her hair combed and parted, she almost looks like a particularly tan—and extremely plain—Englishwoman, which was no doubt her intent. Smoothing the fabric of her dress, she smiles at James in what she likely thinks is a reassuring manner but looks more like she’s discovered there is something in her teeth and is trying not to let anyone see.

 _My girl_ , James thinks. His ungainly, pragmatic goose of a girl.

Thomas bustles about, straightening his coat more times than strictly necessary. He counts and re-counts the contents of a small coinpurse. Silver is nowhere to be seen.

The only timepiece they have in the house is an unreliable clock on the mantel. Thomas and James both possess strong aversions to the presence of a grandfather clock, not that they would be able to afford one. When it strikes eight, both Marielena and Thomas draw themselves together, putting on masks of earnest indifference. These masks falter only when James rises to take both their hands in his.

“Please bring him home.”

-o-

The second long wait is worse. Rebekah is poor company on the best of days, and now with both their natures agitated yet caged within the home, all they can manage is a fraught silence. James paces. Rebekah stays near the window and rocks back and forth, occasionally giving a quiet yelp.

Time drags on. The minutes tick past interminably slow, keeping time with the movement of the sun past the windows. Dread wraps its fingers one at a time around James’s ankles. They should be back by now, surely. The auctions are usually held in morning, so that those who traveled to bid can return home with their… _wares_. It shouldn’t be taking this long.

Finally, Rebekah makes a different sound, her eyes sharp at the window. James hastens to join her. “Is Erik with them?”

“No,” Rebekah reports, then blocks the door when James tries to burst out. When he seizes her arm, she strikes him in the ribs hard enough to put him back a few steps.

By the time he has recovered his breath, Thomas and Marielena are at the door. “What happened?” James demands.

“He wasn’t there,” Thomas answers.

“What do you mean, he wasn’t fucking there?”

Thomas’ face is pale. Even his lips look colorless. He sits down at the table. It’s Marielena who answers now: “He was not with slaves to sold. Is there another, maybe, different place—”

“There’s no other fucking place. The fucking Quakers wouldn’t allow it.” A thrill of horror fills James as the possibilities expand. If Erik’s father has not sold him legally then he will not have even the pitiful hope of a respectable owner here in town, one who might put Erik’s quick mind to use.

And his father knows that. He has sent his son to die.

This time it’s Marielena who stands between James and the doorway, her arms spread to either side of the portal. If it had been anyone else, he would have shoved her away at once. “No! James, no lo ayudarás haciendo algo precipitado—”

There’s a hard knock at the door. It’s Silver, shouldering his way in and shutting the portal swiftly behind him. Either he heard them arguing or he still knows James’s mind well enough to say without greeting, “He won’t be at his father’s house. Going there now will result in nothing but your arrest or death.”

“What would you have me do? His gutless fuck of a father—”

“Can you not speak his mother?” Marielena suggests.

“I’ve no idea how, short of lurking outside of the household.”

“Girl she sent to you?”

“She’s not a fucking messenger pigeon, she slipped out for a moment to pass me a note.” James claws the scrap of paper from his pocket and passes it to Marielena then flinches and snatches it back when he remembers that she can still barely write her own name. “It only says that he’s to be sold, it doesn’t say where or when.”

Silver speaks up. “I think I might know where.”

When James rounds on him, desperate with hope, he says, “There’s a pirate encampment on the Schulykill. Teach sailed up the river fifteen years back and left his quartermaster behind to establish commerce and they have fed on the mercy of the governor ever since as a discreet avenue of black market trade, separate from and far less visible than the encampment across the bay. Were a prominent businessman wanting to sell a slave that he did not wish to show the public, a slave whose face might resemble his own…”

“Where?” James demands.

“James—” Thomas says.

“Near Francis Head. We’ll need your cart and Benjamin.”

Benjamin is the draft pony that James rents from the Green Gentleman whenever he needs to make a delivery. He can be stolen for the night, and if the hostler raises the alarm then by God James will put him in the ground.

Without another word James sets about arming himself. The metal spar is a passable club and Marielena has kept the kitchen knives sharp enough. Upending her sewing kit gives him a length of cloth that she’d been using for—something, which James now binds around his waist underneath his coat then rolls up with the knives inside. Silver reappears, offering him a longer blade, not quite a cutlass but something akin to a machete such as the Maroons used, which he tucks inside his jacket with his hand on the grip. God knows where Silver’s been keeping it. What James wouldn’t give for one pistol, or a musket, but they’ve done more with less.

Rebekah is standing near the door, her mouth set. James draws up short and shakes his head once, hard. “No. You stay.”

Her mouth opens and closes. It’s clear she can’t get the words out. She makes a sharp motion with her hips and shoulder, throwing them out as if stabbing an invisible foe.

“Yes, I fucking know,” James spits. “But if we don’t come back then they need protection. So you fucking _stay_.”

“James!”

He can’t look. Like the nameless wife of Lot or Orpheus in the underworld, if he looks back now he will become McGraw or Barlow or whomever he’s supposed to be so that Thomas will love him. But he must, in case he doesn’t come back after all.

Thomas’ eyes are wide and blue. He looks frightened. James thinks perhaps that Thomas is afraid of him, in that moment, and feels salt on his skin.

Turning, he meets Silver’s gaze, and the two of them pass like shadows out of the door.

-o-

Fetching Benjamin does not, fortunately, require any murder: he is barely held in his stable with a half-door, and whickers in greeting when James presses a hand against his nose. The hostler is absent, either asleep or drunk.

They pass easily enough out of town, presumed to be a late departure. The sentries call out to them, but Silver raises a hand and pretends to slur a greeting. In this, a town known for its taverns, that is more than enough of a watchword.

From there, Silver nudges them down back roads over which the cart barely manages to ramble. They go at a snail’s pace and James grits his teeth as they ease the wheels over bumps that might break them if they go any faster. It is but a chance, a supposition on Silver’s part, that little Erik might have traveled this path, and ever passing second makes his return less likely.

Except then, finally, there are the bobbing lights of lanterns ahead.

James pulls up and Silver covers their light. For a moment they consider their quarry in silence.

“Get off the cart,” Silver finally says. When James turns, he kisses him, once, briefly. “Don’t argue. Look at me. I know.”

James looks. Silver has smothered the light, so there’s only moonlight by which to read his features. Once upon a time, James had trusted that face almost more than his own, for his own sought the silence and rest of the grave while this one demanded more of him. That instinct had led him wrong, then, or so he thought—except it had led him back into Thomas’ arms, and so can he really call it a mistake at all?

Gathering the ribbons, he hands them over to Silver and slides off the cart.

Silver waits quite a while to let him run ahead alongside the road. He’s uncovered the light by now, and lets the quarry see him coming. They slow, turning to lift the lanterns behind them as if in warning. They’re far enough from the city by this point that the bobbing lights are the only pinpricks against the darkness. Even the moon and stars above are obscured by clouds, as if God has drawn a curtain on the proceedings.

James is an old goddamned man, but he has reached the scattered brush and trees around the pirate group and their prisoners. He is an old goddamned man but his son is in that cluster of clacking, chained prisoners, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t die to see him freed.

The pirates seem to have drawn up, their hands on their weapons and their eyes on the road behind them. They all wait there, in the dark, as the cart and its little draft pony draw closer.

Silver takes his time, perhaps giving time for Flint to travel or only to draw out the moment of suspense. When he gets close enough, one of the pirates calls out “Ware!” to which Silver obediently slows Benjamin to a stop and clambers down from the cart.

Even then, it takes him some time to hobble over to within their sight. Once he’s near enough to sight, someone in the group mutters, “What the fuck?”

“No,” Silver responds, still hobbling, “ _who_ the fuck.”

“Well, who the fuck, then?” asks the same person.

“My name,” Silver says, drawing up within the glow of their lanterns, “is Captain John Silver.”

There’s a pause, and then a scoff and some rising laughter from the pirates. Silver says nothing else, just cocks his head to one side. “Go on then,” says the boldest of them, a bearded man with a round face marred by a scar on his chin. “Long John Silver! ‘Eard he was a giant. Pah, my bitch is taller than you! Fuck off, or I’ll take your other leg.”

He draws his blade. Silver doesn’t react, just asks, “Do you know how Edward Teach died?”

That brings them all up short. The laughter dies down. Men like a story; they crave it. The less meaning a man has, the more he searches for it in legends, in the superstitions of the sea, in stories. That’s what gave them all their power—James, Silver, Billy, and Teach.

“Heard he was hung,” says one of the other pirates.

“Oh, he was,” Silver answers lightly, practically batting his eyelashes, and gets an entirely different kind of laugh, less mocking and more than a little interested. “But that’s not how he died.”

“How, then?”

“He was keel-hauled.” Silver crutches a few steps nearer. “Now, have any of you ever seen a man keel-hauled? Run across the bottom of the ship, his flesh torn by barnacles and the very wood that kept the sea at bay for so long?”

“Aye,” a man at the back answers roughly.

Silver leans on his crutch to squint at the man. “How many times did he go under?”

“What?”

“How. Many. Times? Was it just the once? Because I tell you this, on my life: they put Edward Teach across the bottom of the ship, dragging him through a Hell made of dark water and agony, and when they brought him up, he said only one word: _‘Again_.’ Once would have killed a lesser man, but they put him under a second time, and still he breathed. _‘Again,_ ’ he said. A third time, and all that was left was strings of flesh, a bloody sack of a man—and _yet still he breathed_. Well, this time, the British put a bullet in his head, then cut it off to be absolutely sure they would hear nothing more from his mouth.”

Torchlight flickers across the faces of the men. Two cross themselves or kiss items hung about their necks. Only the scar-faced leader looks unimpressed. “Oh, aye, and I suppose you was there to see it all? That’s naught but an old wives’ tale, told from the mouth of a…”

He trails off, for as he spoke Silver made a twirl of the hand and produced a gold doubloon that he is now casually running over the back of his knuckles.

“What is your captain’s name?” Silver inquires. “Wynters? Bellamy? Whoever they are, I’ll ask you kindly to convey a message: a certain Dutchman of the city, who I believe is a source of the goods you currently transport, has roused my anger to such a dark level that, should I discover any captain had conducted commerce with this man from this day forward, they too shall fall under the same cloud. Do you understand?”

“To hell with you,” the bearded pirate says and draws his pistol.

“Shame,” Silver says, and gestures at the man.

Which James had _not_ been expecting, but he quickly flips the knife in his hand and throws it. He’s in almost pitch blackness, so there’s no way for him to see the blade or gauge its flight. It has been years since he’s handled a knife with any intent deadlier than cutting bread. He does not stop to think about any of these things. He throws.

The knife makes no sound as it flies, then buries itself in the pirate’s neck. He gurgles, clutching at it, and fires his pistol, but the bullet goes far wide into the night. Silver doesn’t even flinch, just puts up his hand and bellows, “ _Hold_. I have ten other men out there, ready and waiting to put you all in the ground, all I have to do is drop my fucking hand. _Now_. I have a gold doubloon in my other hand. _Choose_.”

The other four pirates, who had cried out in alarm and lurched dangerously towards action with their hands on their weapons, go still. They scan the darkness and James swears silently, drawing another blade and trying to creep closer as quietly as possible.

Hopefully none of them look closely at the blade embedded in their dying compatriot and realize it’s naught but a kitchen knife.

Silver talks at them more, words which escape James’s ears as he seeks a safe point of vantage. The next he looks, Silver is flicking the doubloon at one of the men who’d crossed himself. The other pirates back away slowly, keeping their hands on their weapons and their eyes on the surrounding darkness. They have the air of a crew weighing their chances, or a crowd about to turn. Silver appears utterly untroubled, leaning on his crutch and watching them take their lanterns with them.

James chances to follow after them for a short distance, ready to cut down the first man who starts back; but these are not the hardened men of Nassau, accustomed to fighting for their meals. From their mutterings they seem more inclined to seek reinforcements, and they hasten away.

The slaves, too, seem inclined to bolt; several try, but are hampered by their indecisive brethren, to whom they are chained. All of them still when Silver limps forward, speaking first in Yoruba then in another language that James thinks might be called Twi. James quickly circles the group lit by Silver’s lantern, hunting for any of the pirates who might have dropped behind the others in the dark; but it appears that Silver’s bluff truly frightened them away.

By the time he stumbles back into the light, muddy and panting, Silver has retrieved the metal spar from the cart and is striking the chains against a sizable rock, breaking them one at a time. For a horrible, sick moment James does not see Erik among them and he imagines the boy already gone, halfway to the Caribbean or shipped off to die in Drummer’s idiotic campaign against the Indian tribes, or simply sunk to the bottom of the Delaware.

But then one of the women shifts aside, pulling free from her chains, and there he is. Erik’s face in the dim lantern light is dirty and tear-streaked, and he looks at Silver with no small amount of fright; and yet he moves forward, his manacles upraised, to be freed of them. They must have taken away his crutch and he limps terribly.

When he turns and sees James, however, that last bit of courage gives out and his face crumples as he lurches forward. James—who had been thinking about how to dispose of the dead man’s body, how to best get back into town without drawing attention from the watchmen, how he’d forgotten the smell of blood until now—flings his arms out wide.

Erik crashes into him, arms tight enough to strangle around James’ neck, and James ignores the twinge in his back as he lifts the boy, holding him tight against his chest. At thirteen years Erik is still small for his age, but large enough that it’s an effort to hold him up.

Over Erik’s sobs, he hears Silver speaking to the others in their multiple tongues and passing out coins. Eventually he comes over and says softly, “James. James. It’s all right, you’ll squeeze the poor boy to death. Come now, let’s go home.”

-o-

There’s a soggy depression not far away into which they roll the dead pirate. He hadn’t been quite dead when they’d endeavored to move him, and a brief struggle had ensued, ending when James yanked the knife out and cut his throat more deeply until the man lay still.

Erik, they tuck underneath a blanket in the cart before they turn back towards the distant lights of Philadelphia. The road behind them remains dark no matter how many fearful glances James casts over his shoulder.

The sky is still dark when Silver draws up beside a small creek, still far from the city. When James gives him a questioning look, Silver gestures. “Wash yourself.”

James blinks down at his clothes. He’d made a mess of things, finishing off that last man. Belatedly he fears what Erik might have seen—but no, Silver would have distracted him.

Stepping down from the cart, he rinses his hands in the brackish water, then strips to the waist and douses his shirt. The cold of the water sobers his mind, and he realizes that he has no idea where they are. He’d let Silver drive them; they’re lucky they hadn’t gone off the road. Shivering, he pulls his wet shirt back on over his head. “How far to the sentries?”

“A mile, maybe less. We might have to kill them, too—I only had the one doubloon.”

James grits his teeth, plucking at the cloth that sticks to his skin. “Before it comes to that, let us claim to be hunting our wayward slave.”

There’s a moment before Silver responds, long enough to wonder if he ever had to make similar pretenses with Madi. “All right,” Silver says. “I’ll let you lead that performance, if you don’t mind.”

“Can _you_ throw a knife?”

“There’s a second lantern in the cart. I can throw that well enough.”

The calm of his voice rankles James. His hands, near frozen from the brackish water, shake unsteadily in counterpoint. Dashing droplets away from his face, he gathers and reties his hair then pulls his coat back on. Thus re-assembled, he rises from a crouch and turns towards Silver, only to find him looking away into the darkness with a grim expression. His gaze is distant, as if he is seeing faraway ports and ships and destinations.

“No,” James chokes. “ _Don’t_.”

Silver looks at him, wary and half-gone already, and James does what he’d desperately wanted to do on Skeleton Island but had lacked the courage: he seizes the front of Silver’s shirt, clumsily pressing their mouths together.

Silver allows this for a few moments then pulls back. “Captain, this is _hardly_ the time for—”

“Don’t leave.”

Sucking in a breath, Silver glares, caught out. “I have to. Those men—they know I’m here, now, in Philadelphia. There will be others. Did you fucking imagine that I walked away freely, with no loose ends which might yet slip around my neck in the night? There was no one to bury the legend of Long John _fucking_ Silver in a convenient grave. Anyone who cares to come looking for it will find their way right to your front door, and Thomas, and Marielena, and _Erik_.”

“ _Then we’ll fucking kill them, too_ ,” James snarls. He’s got Silver hauled up against him, standing on tiptoe, and he can’t bring himself to ease his grip.

“Oh,” Silver growls, “ _that_ will be a fine thing. Captain James and Long John Silver, setting Philadelphia ablaze. And do you think Thomas will approve? How many bodies before he turns away us both in disgust?”

Rage turns the world sharp and black—but then James remembers the plantation, and kneeling in a pool of blood, exultant over the body of an opponent. Thomas had seen him there and flinched away, turned his head not to see.

He swallows, tasting bile. “I _know_. He can’t, and that’s why you have to stay.” Silver’s head tilts and James gropes for calm, releasing his white-knuckled handfuls of Silver’s shirt and letting his trembling fingers roam across the expanse of his chest and waist. He feels old, his joints wizened and aching from the cold.

He says, “You were there, after Miranda died. You saw what it did to me. She was the last tether to my life before James, to the man I used to be, and when she died there was no one…even when I told you about Thomas it wasn’t the same. I was in agony, because—I thought—that I had lost James McGraw and all the good, kind things in me were being swallowed up by a sea of blood.

“But then it happened again, when you sent me away. As dark and terrible as those years were, as iniquitous a life Captain James led, it was still a part of me, and when I lost you…it was agony, all over again.”

“Why the _fuck_ would you want to remember any of it?”

“It wasn’t all misery and horror.”

“Oh no? Pray tell, which part did you find most enjoyable in between the murder, starvation, betrayal, and involuntary amputation?”

Sliding his hands into Silver’s hair, James tilts his face back and murmurs, “The warship.”

In the lantern light Silver is all dark, tumbling hair and glittering eyes, exactly as he always looks in the dreams that haunt James. His curls have even grown out long enough that he looks very nearly the same as when James first met him—older, yes, with lines around his mouth and eyes and the faintest coloring of his namesake in the hair at his temples. They both look older than they should: the hardness of their lives has aged them before their time. Yet in this dim light, with a man’s blood still beneath his fingernails and Silver under his hands, James feels young again.

“Two men and a knife,” he breathes, “against a hundred-gun ship, an armored battery on the beach, and two heavily-armed crews who both wanted us dead. It shouldn’t have worked. I was shot in the shoulder and had nearly drowned the day before, and you were fucking _useless_ in a fight.”

“Hey,” Silver says indignantly. “I recall quite neatly hitting a Spaniard over the head to save your life.”

“You did. _We_ did.” In the dark around them James can almost see the scenes of their past playing out: the beach, the gold reflecting the sunlight, the clear, cold water of the sea. “Armies moved at our word, men gave up their lives because we commanded it. We have done _impossible_ things. So yes…there are parts of the account which I…find hard to leave behind. But harder still is the prospect of sharing those things with Thomas and risking the chance that he recoil from me again. He knows of the things I’ve done, but he views them as a grim necessity. Something I survived and in which I took no pleasure.”

Silver considers this a moment; then he says, “Dufrense.”

Chills erupt on the skin of James’ back. He thinks, wildly, _There you are. There you are_. “Dufrense.”

“Dobbs. I _liked_ sending Dobbs to his death, knowing that he did so simply to please me.”

The grin spreading over James’ face makes his cheeks ache. He presses it to Silver’s jaw, close enough that their eyelashes brush. “I missed you so. Those parts of me that I fear to share with anyone else, you already know. I was lost before you came back to me, and if you leave now I will be lost again.”

“And what does Thomas think of that?”

“Thomas knows well enough that no one person can belong, in whole to another. We shared each other with Miranda, before,” he adds, though his mind now goes to Thomas standing in their kitchen, his fingers dancing and Rebekah’s moving in reply. “He only _thinks_ he wants to understand, because he senses my need to be understood. But we have been too many different people to be known in full by just one, don’t you think?”

“Mr. Hamilton?”

Erik’s voice cracks in the middle of his cry, tilting between that of a child and soon-to-be-man. The cart rocks slightly as he sits up and James jolts away from Silver, passing a quick hand over his face before striding back towards the cart.

“It’s alright, Erik, hush now. Have some water.”

Erik takes the canteen eagerly from James’ hands but then startles anew when Silver appears out of the dark at James’ elbow. After he has gulped down a few mouthfuls and wiped his chin, he asks, “Are you truly him, sir? Are you Long John Silver?”

Grimacing, James cuts his eyes over to Silver, who simply shrugs and says, “Yes, I am.”

Leaning forward, James says, “You must not tell _anyone_ , Erik. Not a soul.”

“Of course not, sir.” Erik looks a little offended at the suggestion, but then his eyes wander back to Silver, filled with awe and lingering fear.

The three of them hurry back into town with alarming ease. If these are the qualities of the regular militia, James does not like their chances should one of the native tribes attempt a raid. When they enter their own door—and James never thought he would be joyful to see that miserable little bandbox—they find the others keeping grim watch around the table.

It is so strange to see them there, surrounded by the crockery and doilies and the table that James has built with his own hands—though Rebekah, at least, has a knife in hand as she answers the door, which she quickly tucks away at the sight of Erik. In Nassau, Miranda had remained so separate from James’ life at sea, until she had breached that barrier and almost instantly been consumed. Their inland home had flourished with the delicacies of a gentler life, things that broke so easily once they’d been exposed to the life at sea.

James had tried so very hard to keep from breaking those delicate things in Miranda’s house, even if that meant staying away for weeks at a time until he could wrest the darkness from around his heart. Now he is out of practice and he wavers at the doorway, sick in his belly. He imagines that if he looks over his shoulder, he will see bloody footprints leading to the door and crossing the threshold.

Silver is talking, of course. There’s apparently much business to conduct, all in whispers: the situating of Erik on a cot by the hearth and the tending of his wounds, which he delegates to Marielena; murmured inquires to Thomas on whether anyone in his circle of printers could forge a writ of sale; admonishments to Erik that he’d best have a scone or two before he nods off, there’s a good lad.

Then, “Oh,” he adds, reaching into his bag, “I almost forgot. Rebekah.”

James sucks in a breath, watching as Silver pulls the cloth back from the wrapped object at his side to reveal golden branches. When she turns, Rebekah’s eyes widen then immediately fill with tears. Her arms expand as if of their own accord and Silver places the candle holder in them as a different kind of child returned, as faith repaid in full.

“Mersí,” Rebekah says, clutching. “Where did you—no, do not say. Mersí muncho.”

For once Silver does not look afraid to hear strange words from her mouth; instead he answers softly, “De nada.”

For his poor part, James sits by Erik’s side at the hearth until the boy simply can’t keep his eyes open any longer and he slumps against James, his curly black hair tickling the skin of James’ elbow. Marielena has long since departed for work, but the chafing around Erik’s ankles has been treated with salve and several blankets have been stripped from their beds to make a suitable cot beside the fireplace. God knows what Silver is planning to tell him about their sleeping arrangements; James hasn’t got that far.

When James shifts, easing Erik down to lie flat, he stirs a little, blinking up at James. Bread crumbs dot his dirty cloths.

“Were you a pirate, too, sir?” he asks sleepily.

James stills, looking down at him. Thinks of Eleanor Guthrie, looking up at him. “Yes,” he murmurs.

“And you sailed with Long John Silver. Were you—are you Captain Flint, sir?”

Taking a blanket, James tucks it around Erik. “You are too clever by half, you know.”

“I know, sir. So my father said.” Erik’s eyelids droop again, then rise through apparent force of will. “I always thought there must be more to the story. Of Long John Silver and Captain Flint.”

“How’s that?”

“They say you were the best of friends, sir, closer than brothers, until he betrayed you for treasure. That greed drove you apart, as befit the corrupt nature of pirates, but that’s not true at all, sir, is it? They only told that story to make you all seem cruel and heartless. He never betrayed you.”

The best lies are someplace close to the truth—but what could one even call the truth in this story? Silver betrayed him for treasure once but greed hadn’t been what drove them apart. It’d been fear: Silver’s terror of what the world might take from him and his own dread of accepting blame for what the world had already taken, that he’d deserved the loss and the suffering. Those two agonies had rested against each other, and his broke first. Of course it had. Deep inside he’d always known it would come to that: he was an invert, a loathsome degenerate in the eyes of the world, and the only way to cast off that branding was to unmake the fucking _world_.

He’d tried. Oh, God, he’d tried. He would have died trying, and in doing so made himself a more terrifying monster than might have been hanged for something so mild as sodomy.

Silver had stopped him, and somewhere in James’ heart he will never forgive that. It was needed. He understands that. Thomas was alive, and Silver had delivered them back to each other’s arms. But the world spins on, comfortable in its orbit. Those who betrayed and imprisoned Thomas, who cast James and Miranda into exile, have been killed or died of other causes, but the British fucking empire remains in the eyes and ears of their neighbors, in the stories they tell to reassure themselves that _they_ are right, that they were always right, and the condemned deserved their fate.

“I love him,” James tells Erik. “I love him with all of my heart.”

The grip of sleep falters on Erik and he studies James’ face carefully. James lets him look, half-ashamed to confess, knowing that he only has the courage to do so now because of Erik’s total and complete dependence on them. Even if he found an ear willing to listen to a slave boy, he’d be signing away his only protection in this world.

And yet—James would have him know. Longs for this to be known by someone, but especially by _this_ someone: that the only true betrayal that Silver ever committed was to save James and give him a second chance of happiness.

“I see,” Erik murmurs. He does, though he clearly doesn’t know how to feel about it yet.

“Go to sleep,” James orders, tucking the blanket in firmer.

Erik looks thoroughly relieved that no further reaction seems required of him, and promptly closes his eyes.

Climbing to his feet, James stirs the hearth a bit. It’s late morning by now and he should go to the shop but he feels slightly delirious, his eyes itchy with the lack of sleep. He can hear Silver in their bedroom, thumping about and likely examining his clothes for any trace of blood or other incriminating evidence. James should do likewise.

Instead he looks about for Thomas, needing a way back out of the darkness.

He finds him in the kitchen, staring into space and slowly shredding a basil plant into tiny pieces. Thomas’ eyes are wet.

“Thomas? What is it?”

With a jolt, Thomas seems to return to himself. He looks down at the scraps of herb in his hands and winces, laughing without any mirth. “I am a wretch. An utter wretch. James, those people yesterday—God, why didn’t I buy one? I had the money. They took a baby straight from its mother’s arms as she wept, I could have at least bought the baby.”

“We can’t take care of a baby,” James protests, confused.

“We could have _tried_!” Thomas cries out then quickly wrestles himself back under control, dropping his voice. “There was a man who worked in my father’s house— _worked_. You see? He was a slave, but we called him a servant and named him Gregory. God only knows his real name, I never bothered to ask. When I first drew up my radical ideas for the West Indies, Gregory was one of the first people to whom I presented the plan. I thought myself so progressive—I would be a good and wise master, thoughtful towards his _servants_ and mindful to treat them as human beings.” He laughs, horribly. “I _asked_ his opinion, as if I couldn’t have him beaten or sold or even _killed_ if his answer displeased me. My objections to slavery were purely philosophical in nature, for how can one person own another? I never saw the stocks, the whips, the chains—God, that _baby_ —”

“Stop,” James interjects, for Thomas is beginning to pant for breath.

More alarmingly, Thomas giggles, wiping his eyes. “And they call _you_ the monster.”

James stills with one hand resting on Thomas’ shoulder. He can still smell blood, faintly, and wonders where he forgot to wipe.

Thomas, however, appears utterly sincere. “I never even thought of them. For all my supposed kindness and nobility, I never once considered what might happen to the Maroon communities, or how a stable Nassau might increase slave trade. I never even _cared_.”

Swallowing, James says, “Neither did I. We raided slavers frequently enough; if wages were good at the time, we’d free them and take them on the crew. If they weren’t—we’d sell them. It wasn’t until I saw an opportunity for alliance that my views began to shift, and I honestly cannot say they moved very far. The Maroons were a means to an end, and while I grew to admire and even like some of them, I cared little for their cause except for how it furthered my own.”

That calms Thomas—except then he looks over James’ shoulder. Silver has come into the room and stands near the door, watching them both with a veiled expression.

“How the hell ever did you come by your wife?” Thomas demands.

James resists the urge to strike his own forehead.

Silver merely tilts his head to one side. “I wasn’t aware that you knew so little of female courtship, Mr. Hamilton.”

“Don’t prevaricate. Were I a—a person once enslaved by white men, or raised by those who were, I would never trust another. And yet, from what James says, that’s precisely what she did. How on Earth did you manage that?”

“Well. I suppose it helped that I am circumcised.”

In unison, James and Thomas both squint at him.

With a grin that flashes his white teeth in the candlelight, Silver hop-thumps his way closer. “We were not the first pirates to encounter the Maroon camp: apparently there’s a sizable enclave in Brazil which consists mostly of Sephardim, and another contingent on Jamaica. Both make every attempt to hide themselves from the outside world as surely as the Maroons, but after…everything, Madi shared their existence with me. I suppose she hoped that I’d move on to join one of those enclaves rather than waiting around for her to change her mind. In any case, they had proven reliable allies in the past, enough that their trustworthiness boosted my own.” He pauses and grins again. “That, and Madi is a prodigious reader. She was quite fond of Exodus.”

Thomas laughs weakly, wiping at his face again. “God love you. And I don’t mean that—Christ, I never know what I mean. Christ. God. You’re all mixed up in them, I swear. You’re something holy to me, whatever you are.”

He drops a hand to Silver’s cheek, his palm still streaked with his own tears. If there is a more holy benediction in the world, James cannot think of one. He watches Silver hold perfectly still to accept that touch and thinks, _I am here, and there is nowhere else in the world for me but this._

 

 

 

* * *

 

-The London Coffee House in Philadelphia, outside of which slave auctions were frequently held. <http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/slavery-and-the-slave-trade/#4676>

-There were pirate encampments all around Philadelphia, though notably along the Schuylkill River. The story of Edward Teach bringing a ship up the river is too poorly sourced to merit a link but I liked the idea enough to use it anyway.

\- There was also a significant Sephardic Jewish pirate population in both Brazil and the Caribbean. <https://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Jewish-pirates-of-the-Caribbean-447397>


End file.
